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compuer won't turn on completely

All that happens when I try to start up my laptop is it makes a whirring noise. That, and, the caps lock key has a blue light that blinks on and off while the F12 key with wifi logo has a red light that stays on. Leave the laptop whirring and it may make a higher pitched whirr after a few minutes? Hard to tell. Restatrting does same thing. Pressing anything including enter does nothing. Past few weeks my laptop has had difficulty loading webpages without me circling the cursor on screen via the touchpad. The other day I was propmted to update drivers via an MSN associate but wasn't sure of its trustworthiness so I didn't. Am using Windows 7 with HP. Has my PC crashed? Someone said something about graphics card. What does this mean? I am not a gamer or high power user by any means. Pls advise. I have done forum and online searches but found nothing so far on public computer.

I should have mentioned that nothing comes up on screen. Totally black. Those two key lights I mentioned in my previous post are the only things that work apart from the usual whirring noise when switched on.

I've just been into a repair place. The attendant didn't speak English too well but I did understand it may have something to do with the "main board" or "mother board" which is "electronic circuitry where anything can happen and depending on the problem it can take up to $300-$400 to fix or it could be a few dollars to fix including the inspection fee of $25." The attendant did also mention the Windows in Safe Mode screen which I've seen and used on occassion in the past. This screen doesn't even appear. Totally black.

The laptop has only ever been moved from room to room carefully and cost under $400 brand new.

Am here to get a second opinion and options to consider rather than take one repair person's word for it.

Well...it's a laptop, which means, IMO, it's disposable and was intended to be such.

As for any cost analysis...you can do that. Does it make sense to spend $$ to troubleshoot something that may be outdated...when it can be replaced with a newer model for less than the stated cost of troubleshooting/repairing?

Beyond that...it's hard to speculate on what might be wrong, based on the info you have provided, IMO.